Special Note: All posts contain non-affiliate links - I do not have an Amazonian Fancy Pants Affiliate Thingie.
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Reading Resolutions for 2012
- Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility
- Reread Pride and Prejudice
- Reread Gone with the Wind in addition to some critiques (I first read GWTW when I was 11 years old, then I read it several times again through the years. I suspect I will be horrified by the re-read. Sigh. I need to reflect on that which is exactly why I want to reread it)
- Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone
- Dennis Lehane's A Drink Before the War
- Reread Catcher in the Rye (I LOVED this in my late 20s. I'm curious to see if I will still be impressed.)
- Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent
- Charles Dickens' Great Expectations
- Edith Wharton's House of Mirth
- At least one Dorothy Parker short story (I read "Big Blond", "The Telephone Call", "You Were Perfectly Fine", "The Last Tea" and "Little Curtis")
- A graphic novel (Note: I read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi)
- George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones
- George R.R. Martin's Clash of Kings
- Reread Atwood's Oryx and Crake, then read the sequel The Year of the Flood
- John Irving's The World According to Garp
- One Sherlock Holmes story
- One Agatha Christie
- Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
- Oscar Wilde's A Portrait of Dorian Gray
- Daniel Borstein's The Seekers
- Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence
- blogger Kelle Hampton's Bloom
- blogger Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened
I think that is it -- the list includes plenty of space for book club selections and delicious popular fiction that will be released this year, while still giving me definition and focus.
In the past, I've based my Reading Resolutions on simple numbers (i.e. "Read x number of books this year") and generally, I fit about 40-50 reads yearly. However, for 2012, I wanted to pinpoint some specific sorts of reads and put them in a list. Rather than mistily muse "Someday, I am going to read Great Expectations.", I am putting it on a list and I am going to Actually Do It. This year (at least before the Mayans fulfill their quest for world domination.) I wandered throughout my house to compile this list -- every selection is something I already own and many have been gathering dust for years (Jacques Barzun, I am looking at you). Furthermore, I wanted to expose myself to some different manners of writing style, language and story structures. I tried to pick from a variety of genres.
Currently, I am reading Margaret Atwood's Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination which is DELICIOUS -- it is much more than just her mental meanderings on speculative fiction and science fiction. It was a Random Grab at the library, which are always fun, right? I am also reading John Green's Looking for Alaska (Shout out to Zoot for pointing me to this author -- I LOVED his heartbreaking The Fault in Our Stars) I am also more than half way through the Game of Thrones: Book 1 -- I do have a tight timeline on that series because the HBO show comes back with Season 2 in April and I have decided I want to read the books from now on before seeing the show (i.e. I saw the Season 1 before reading Book 1. I think the reading experience will be richer if I reverse that for Season 2/Book 2). Unfortunately, I am not a speed reader like Average Jane and will need to light a fire under my ass pretty soon to meet my goal.
And yes, I AM open to suggestions and have some space on my reading resolutions list -- anything that you have read lately that is a Must Read for my 2012 Reading Resolutions? Do you have any recommendations for a graphic novel?
